


The Member of the Wedding

by Aja



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Demonic Possession, F/M, Gender Roles, Genderbending, Genderfluid, Genderfuck, Horror, Japan, Japanese Character(s), Japanese Mythology & Folklore, M/M, Magical Realism, Other, Shapeshifting, Tricksters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 15:14:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7513114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aja/pseuds/Aja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur is getting married. He just doesn't know to who yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Member of the Wedding

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so, I actually wrote a weird version of this fic years ago, but it didn't really work as what it was; so I only showed it to a handful of people on Livejournal because I wasn't sure how to make it work and I thought that I might turn it into an original story? But I think there's value in letting it just be what it is. And what it is apparently is a genderqueer shapeshifting demon fanfic that may or not be about dreaming and magical realism, so basically my favorite thing in the universe. 
> 
> It's... still a weird fic. But I think it's less weird than it used to be.

The melon princess had been taught from childhood that she was special. Yes, for even though she was raised by poor farmers, she grew up beside the unruly river that had brought her to salvation — safely inside the melon where they had popped her open and found her squawling and terrified inside. 

Uriko-hime, her foster mother would tell her, when we pulled you out of the river, we knew only that you were a miracle. Do not waste your beauty, your rose, the miracle of your existence.

No, Uriko-hime would agree, but she would sit on the riverbank, watching the endless roil of the current that had carried her from unknown lands, and wonder what sort of miracle she was.

The prince heard of her beauty, and of her miraculous origin, and she knew from the first she would love him, before he even stretched out his fine hand in greeting.

She loved him, and still, when the trickster knocked on her door that black night, Uriko hesitated. And in that lightning-thought, that one moment in which she fantasized about opening the door for him, she saw it all as if it had already happened, her future laid out for her as cleanly as a clean-sliced melon: she saw the trickster, his black talons curving around the door of black persimmon, purring, Let me come in.

She saw herself, placing her hand on the opposite side of the door, asking, what can you want at this late hour?

She saw the demon, the _ama-no-jaku_ , answering with his soft hum, I wish you to make me a fine new coat—a coat of silk and brocade. 

Her fingertips lay flat against the smooth carved surface of the door of black persimmon. The plums have not yet begun to drop from the trees. The fields are rich with lavender. What can you want with such a thing, with a cloak so fine and heavy, before the storms have yet traveled over the mountains?

Oh, said the trickster, his voice a thick smooth rumble against the door. She saw his fingertips, his taloned fingertips, meeting her fingertips, touching her own around the doorframe, curling around the edge of the cold hard wood.

So much. I want so much, princess.

The melon princess thought she could feel the pulse beating out her fate against the dark sinews of wood pressed between their palms.

I wander the earth, the trickster said. I leave nothing behind.

One gets tired of owning only one’s skin.

Let me come in.

Let me come in.




 

The dizziness from the last round of sake had not quite worked its way out of his head or his walk as Arthur let himself into his apartment. As if on cue, the moment he flipped on the lights, the phone started to ring. 

Arthur carefully removed any emotion from his voice when he saw the caller id.

“This is Arthur,” he said calmly.

“Arthur,” answered the caller, just as calmly. “I know you’re probably just getting home, but I want to talk to you about something.”

“It’s late, Mal,” Arthur replied, making an effort not to glance at his watch even though he knew it was well past three am. “It can wait until the reception.”

Mal laughed. “Not exactly, Arthur,” she said. “It’s the marriage that I want to talk about.”

Arthur gripped the phone, a strange reflex given that he wasn’t necessarily surprised by the abruptness of Mal’s call. Mal had been attempting to corner him into having this conversation for months, and for months Arthur had been letting awkward silences take the place of things he did not wish to discuss. He privately cursed himself for allowing the lateness of the hour and the alcohol he had consumed at his bachelor party—if one could call it a party rather than a proper assembly of important friends and acquaintances who bought him drinks and said all the right things about commitment—to get the better of him.

“What do you want to say?” he asked tersely.

“You don’t love her,” Mal said.

Arthur said nothing.

“You told yourself that you would fall in love.” Mal’s voice was light and conversational, as if she were telling Arthur about the weather. “But you haven’t.”

“You’re not yourself, Mal,” Arthur said. “You should get some sleep.”

“Arthur.” Mal’s voice turned sharp just as Arthur’s thumb hovered over the disconnect button, chasing away the polite fiction Arthur had been willing to entertain that his friend was drunk, and only drunk. "Do you believe in karma?"

“I don’t,” said Arthur, wishing briefly that Mal would confine her unerring perception to their work together and not to his personal life. “All actions have consequences. Some consequences arrive later than others.”

“Some consequences,” Mal said coolly, “are difficult to reverse.”

“Good night, Mal.”

“Good night, Arthur,” Mal responded, almost sweetly. “Enjoy your dreams.”

Arthur stared at the phone for a moment, feeling his stomach slowly tighten and twist, before he finally ended the call.

Mal did not call back.

Five minutes later, however, Rizuka did.

“Arthur!” she said, out of breath as if she’d been dancing a great deal all evening. “Aren’t you excited?”

“Should I be?”

“It’s the eve of our wedding. Take that as you may.” She sounded amused, as if he’d said something funny when he hadn’t. He frowned.

“Did your celebration go well?”

“It’s still going on. I can hardly hear over the noise these girls are making.” She laughed, her voice a light trill against the muffled background sounds of the club.

“It’s late,” he said, not wanting to scold but hearing the reprimand in his voice nonetheless.

“Don’t be so fussy, Arthur,” she said. “You’re not my husband yet – only my architect.” She laughed again. “I don’t have to take on the burdens of the world until tomorrow at two pm.”

“I’m not asking you to do that,” Arthur responded.

“Of course you are,” Rizuka answered merrily. “It’s a wedding, isn’t it? That’s what husbands and wives do, right? Take on each other’s burdens? You just have more than most people.”

“I—” Arthur began, and then stopped. There was really nothing he could say in response; Riza was being truthful, even if she was blunt to a fault.

“They just called our name for the karaoke room!” And again Rizuka laughed. Arthur rubbed his forehead. “I have to go, Arthur,” Rizuka said. “Should I call you in the morning? If any of us are awake, that is.”

“I’ll see you at the temple,” Arthur responded. “Try to get some rest.”

"Oh, don't worry," she said, her smile audible over the phone. "I intend to sleep the dreamless sleep of the blissfully happy."

He rung off and followed her example, and went to bed. When he finally did allow himself to glance at his alarm clock, it was to discover that he had spent the preceding hour and most of the waning night lying awake, wondering if all men on their wedding nights felt nothing but a sense of weariness.

 

 

 

The next morning Arthur was up far earlier than he needed to be, especially given the scant amount of sleep he had gotten the previous night. His preparations for the wedding were mostly complete, but he spent most of the morning getting his apartment ready for Rizuka’s arrival after the wedding. They had decided to forego a more extravagant honeymoon—neither Arthur’s work schedule nor her social functions would allow for it. Arthur accepted this situation as being for the best. The part of him that had felt relief when they had decided upon this arrangement was best left ignored. 

Around ten thirty he called Rizuka’s condo, where, he assumed, Rizuka and possibly several of her bridesmaids had crashed after returning from the karaoke club. At first no one answered, and he patiently waited another ten minutes before trying again. 

This time, a strange voice answered the phone: it was male, and sounded deep and gravely. Arthur’s first thought was that Rizuka and her friends had hit the host clubs after leaving the karaoke bars; to his horror, this thought did not fill him with horror at all, but rather a kind of dry, detached fascination. 

“I’m looking for Mitamori Rizuka,” Arthur informed whoever was on the other end of the line. “I’m her fiancée.” 

“Oh.” The speaker sounded bored. “She’s not here.” 

“She’s getting married today.” 

“I know,” said the speaker. Arthur tried to place the voice without success; it was new to him; though they were both speaking in Japanese, the other man had a strange accent—it wasn’t Japanese or American; it could have been faintly British; mostly it wasn’t from anywhere.

“Who are you?” he asked, in English.

“I’m in the wedding,” responded the speaker, switching smoothly into the new language. “I have to go now.”

With a click, he hung up.

Arthur, unaccustomed to being the one who had phone calls disconnected, tried to call back for several minutes without success.

When she was very young, her parents argued one night. One night over barley and the rising cost of grain they argued, and her father spoke angrily through the thin walls, in a voice that carried to where she traced the patterns of the fall leaves with her small fingers. 

We should never have taken her in, he said. We cannot afford to raise a child. She is destined to come to ruin if she stays in our care.

This is our fate, said her mother. She will marry a great prince. She will bring peace throughout the land; all who see her will cease their fighting and take up a new vow of loyalty to the kingdom.

And are we, said her father, to forsake our own paths? To go without bread, so that the daughter of the gods can live?

We are already on the road we have chosen, her mother answered. Where we walk, we make all paths our own.

Later, years later, they went into the village. Her mother picked persimmons from the orchard by hand, and dyed the silk for her first kimono. The fabric covered her up and crowded her knees.

She saw herself in the mirror, draped in saffron and orange, and did not know herself in such strange fine robes.

When they went into the village, the people called her the melon princess.




  
  
  


The guest list was just as Rizuka had wanted. In attendance were many of Japan’s most renowned celebrities and politicians, there to honor the bride’s fame, her powerful uncle, and the groom’s rapidly ascending legal career. After much searching Arthur finally located his friends, positioned near the back of the temple, along with assorted other guests he had specifically requested be near the front. Of course, he noticed this only when stationed at the altar, awaiting his bride-to-be. He firmly pushed his irritation to the back of his mind.

Rizuka, dressed in shimmering white crepe, was a vision of loveliness. Her black hair looked almost inky beneath the veil, and the pearls at her throat, an early wedding present from Arthur, emphasized the deep hollows of her neckline, the sharp collarbones tapering into small shoulders. She was undeniably beautiful. When the news of the wedding announcement had gone forth, Arthur had found himself pictured on the front covers of half the society magazines (and even some of the news magazines) of Tokyo. When a socialite as eligible as Mitamori Rizuka, niece of one of the most powerful energy moguls in the world, became engaged, it was news.

Arthur had never denied his good fortune in finding a bride as beautiful, as smart, and as well-connected as Rizuka was. He had never denied it, even as a small voice in the back of his mind wondered if the eagerness with which her uncle, Saito, had thrown them in one another’s paths, had encouraged them to date, was meant to be a sort of payment for services rendered. Arthur had not thought about that, at least not more than he could help: Rizuka was her own person, not her uncle’s stooge. She was brilliant, with a tendency to switch between calm self-assurance and flippancy which he found charming. She was a perfectly composed portrait of what a beautiful and high-powered woman should look like, all the way from her expertly curled eyelashes down to her designer stilettos. She was, from what he had observed, as ruthless in business as her uncle before her, and Arthur admired her as much as he found her fascinating.

But in the moment, there was something indefinably different about her, Arthur thought as she approached the front of the temple, clad in her billowing white kimono—something he couldn’t pinpoint in her stance, the way she moved, the arch of her neck. He found himself unable to tear his gaze away from her as she came toward him, and with the light adorning her hair and her eyes meeting his, he thought that he had honestly never loved her more.

She kept her eyes focused ahead of her, looking neither to her left nor to her right as they heard their wedding vows. Arthur, for his part, found himself rapidly forgetting all of his previous annoyances. The late-night call, the petty disregard of his wishes about the seating of his friends, the odd and unidentified voice on the phone—all faded in Arhur’s memory as the ceremony proceeded.

“Do you, Arthur, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

Arthur turned, faced his bride solemnly, and replied with all the conviction he felt, “I do.”

“And do you, Rizuka, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

It happened.

Arthur, looking back later on, could only describe it as a brief flash, an impression rather than an expression. Rizuka smirked—the only word for it—and her eyes, so it seemed to Arthur, glittered impossibly gold for an instant, as she turned for the first time since approaching the altar to meet his gaze.

“Hmm,” she said, the quirk of her mouth imprinting itself upon Arthur’s mind even as he told himself he imagined it. “I do.”

  
  
  
  
  


The sense of strangeness did not end with the wedding vows. When leaning in to kiss her after the ceremony, Arthur felt Rizuka flinch a moment before she submitted and kissed back, her lips brushing fleetingly against his. She seemed increasingly restless at the reception, and there was something about her gaze that made Arthur feel a bit like a laboratory rat, as if he was under constant, detached observation.

“Hey,” she said after they had been standing in line greeting a long list of guests for some time. “Most of these people—are they our friends or just people we have to pretend like we like?”

Arthur barely concealed his initial horror, and instead cast her a sidelong glance. She was gazing around the room with a look of frank disdain. He had seen her wear a mask of frivolity so often, even when her feet hurt and her eyes were red from hours without sleep, that the expression appeared to belong to someone else entirely.

“You sent handwritten invitations to each of them for a reason,” he reminded her at last. And then, because she had reminded him of the earlier snub, he said carefully, “Some of them are our oldest friends,” and pointed towards the group of his architecture associates, standing in the back of the line.

She looked where he pointed. “You remember them, right?” She was gazing at them as if she didn’t. Currently, Ariadne was balancing a spoon on her nose while Cobb made notes furiously on his tablet and Yusuf tried to keep Nash and Tadashi from breaking into a fight. Mal was surveying the entire scene serenely.

Arthur, remembering their conversation from the night before, felt a surge of defensiveness that caused him to slip his fingers through Rizuka’s.

When he did, she flinched, the same way she had when he’d kissed her at the end of the ceremony. She looked down at their hands for a moment, then up at Arthur. Again he felt that strange sense of being observed, as if she’d never really seen him before. She took a step towards him and leaned in, releasing his hand to trail her fingers up his own and over his wrist. Then she went on tiptoe to speak into his ear. He bristled reflexively; they were in public. People could see them.

“We could leave here early, you know,” she said, her voice dropping to a low, self-satisfied purr. She tilted her head up to him, mouth open, eyes flashing. Arthur took a firm step back, detaching her fingers from his arm. His heart had begun to race though he had no idea why.

“We owe these people our thanks and our time,” Arthur said firmly. “We can’t just leave now.”

Her mouth pursed into an angry little ‘o’ at the obvious reproof. She stared at him in open disgust for a moment. She let out a faint huff of disapproval. “You don’t like them. You don’t even know most of them.”

Arthur bit back the immediate retort that she had been the one responsible for creating a wedding so large that he had needed cue cards to remember the names of everyone in the wedding party. He thought wryly that perhaps she had needed cue cards as well—since the end of the wedding he had not seen her exchange a single word with anyone from her family or any of her friends.

She had, in fact, stuck by his side the whole time.

He sighed and slipped his arm through her own. Her eyes went wide and she again gave him that measuring, puzzled look – as if she didn’t know him at all. Arthur kept his voice deliberate, soft.

“It would be rude to leave just yet,” he said. He pressed his thumb delicately against the back of her hand. “But hey, soon enough.”

She looked down, her jet black hair shielding her eyes. When she looked back up, she was smiling, a tiny, thin half-smile. It was half-mocking, half-playful, Arthur was sure; but it filled him with none of the discomfort of her normal light sarcasm.

She huffed again, nodding her head towards his friends. “If they’re your best friends, what are they doing all the way back there?”

“A good question,” Arthur said dryly.

“Hmm.” Rizuka tilted her head and gazed at them.

She was still looking at them when Saito approached them in the reception line and attempted to kiss her on the cheek. To Arthur’s horror, Rizuka openly flirted with him, slipping her hand over her uncle’s cheek and leaning in to whisper something that made Saito’s eyes widen. He shot Arthur a glance, clearly taken aback, but then Rizuka’s moment of irreverence subsided and they all handled it well. After exchanging his greetings with Arthur, he turned to Rizuka and asked her if she was going to give up her career now that she had become a wife.

In response, Rizuka stared at him for so long, looking so blatantly unimpressed, that Arthur bent forward to murmur a note of caution. When he did, however, she suddenly grabbed hold of his hand and tugged, pushing unceremoniously past her impending record deal and out of the reception line.

“Let’s go say hi,” she said, tugging harder. Arthur opened his mouth to protest but found himself unable to formulate words for her. He should tell her they had to return, he thought dazedly. She wasn’t acting at all like herself, nor as was proper for a bride on her wedding day.

Instead, he found himself stammering apologies as she headed past hundreds of Japan’s most notable socialites and businessmen, straight towards the back of the line, where Mal was waving.

 

 

 

Rizuka huffed the moment she was in Arthur’s car. “That was boring. Your friends were the only decent people there.” She dumped her heels in Arthur’s floorboard, wriggling her toes. “People are idiots for walking around in those things for hours.”

Arthur cast her an amused glance, something he found he had been doing for the better part of the day. “You were the one who wanted a large wedding.”

“Well, I was an idiot,” she said bluntly. “It was all just for show anyway.”

Arthur deliberately didn’t respond to this. He drove through the city in silence. Night had already fallen around them, and Rizuka stared out the window of his car, eyes glued to the sights and sounds of Tokyo after dark with the same curious, detached expression with which she had fixed Arthur for most of the day.

“You don’t like it when people call you Arthur-kun or Arthur-san or Arthur-sama,” she said suddenly.

Arthur fought the urge to stare. He had suffered silently through a thousand cultural honorifics in the years he had lived in Japan. She had never noticed before.

“I don’t,” he said finally. “But I don’t mind too much.”

“So what should I call you?” Rizuka turned and gazed at him, her face open. For a moment she looked much older than her 24 years. Arthur let himself stare back at her for longer than was absolutely necessary. He was on the verge of answering, when she said as an afterthought, “Darling.” She blinked. “We’re married, now; I could call you my darling.”

She gazed at him evenly.

“You can still call me Arthur,” he told her. “Nothing has to change.”

“Okay, darling,” she said, as if she’d said it a thousand times. Arthur let it pass without comment. He also let it pass when she did it again a few moments later; and then again, and again, until he stopped minding, so familiar did the word sound when she uttered it at the edge of her breath, faint and careful.

That night Arthur watched Rizuka enter his apartment as if it were for the first time. He tactfully ignored the way she seemed to be completely lost, just as she had seemed to be completely unfamiliar with the guests at her own wedding reception. She took in all his things, the bookshelves, the legal certificates, the carefully arranged plants and the sparse decorating style Arthur had made his own. When she looked back at Arthur it was with a faint smile.

“You don’t have a lot of useless stuff,” she said, sounding satisfied.

“Most of your things are in the guest bedroom,” Arthur told her, trying to humor her even though she had put most of them there herself. He wondered if she was going through some sort of temporary disassociation. “We agreed they would stay there until you decide where you want them.”

Rizuka shrugged and flicked her wrist, as if she were casually waving away a lifetime spent having the best of everything whenever she wanted. “I don’t care about that.” She looked down at her wedding dress, a gorgeous designer gown that had cost a fortune and had previously clung to her in all the right places but was looking more and more bedraggled as the evening wore on. “I just want some real clothes.”

Arthur calmly pointed her in the direction of the guest bedroom, where she had slept many times before.

Ten minutes later, she re-emerged, wearing none of the clothes she had previously sent around to Arthur’s place, but one of Arthur’s old shirts and a pair of his old sweats.

“I found them packed away in the closet,” she said, almost apologetically. They were oversized on her small frame, especially the shirt, and her arms and legs seemed comically thin by comparison. She settled herself on Arthur’s couch, looking up at him with an expression of vague apprehension.

Arthur sat down on the couch and kissed her, holding her face between his hands. She did not kiss back at first, just hovered, neither leaning in nor pulling back. He kept kissing her, ignoring her hesitation, exploring her mouth until he found an answering shudder throughout her body. He pulled her firmly into his arms and felt her slide against him, opening her mouth to him, letting him kiss her more deeply. When she started to kiss back, Arthur did his best to ignore the rush in his stomach, the butterflies he typically only felt during a first kiss. He didn’t quite succeed.

When they finally drew apart, Rizuka’s eyes were wide, and for a moment, Arthur thought, they glittered gold.

“You should show me your room now, darling,” she said, her voice low.

Arthur did.

 

 

She spent her days on the bank of the river by her house, reading under willows and embroidering stories. She sometimes dreamed of palaces, and dark-robed men on horseback—but she did not dream of the world, for the world came to her. A wondrous seamstress, they called her. She could clothe anyone in riches out of rice sacks and tannin oil. She wove with a magic needle and thread, the villagers said—with the pin and ribbon they had found in her hair when they pulled her out of the stream. 

There were no melon trees nearby—she had her ways of checking. Those who came to view her work brought her many things from outside. Sometimes they brought her fruit that kissed her tongue, and sometimes they brought her jade melons she left to ripen in the sun.

She spun fine silk threads, wove them into long robes, into scarves and garots and fine rich coats. She produced the garments; the people shed their old clothes like cast-off skins, draping themselves in the possibility of new disguise.

They left looking just as they had before, to everyone’s notice but their own.

When the soldier-prince in spring came riding on his horse, she saw that he was strong-voiced and handsome. He came to ask only for a coat, a second coat for his tailored dark uniform.

She looked into his eyes. I will make you the thing you desire, she said. You will wear it like a second skin.

Each day he came back. Is it ready yet?

A day longer. Return tomorrow.

Each day he returned. Is it ready? he said.

A day more, she said, and you will have the thing you seek.

The day finally came when her work was done. Is it ready? he asked, though his voice was unsteady.

It is, she said, and allowed him to see. The wedding suit of white, with royal brocade; her dress placed beside it, silk trimmed in gold thread.

Do I have the thing I seek? he asked with a smile.

She gave him her hand.

It was destiny, said her father, when the news was announced. The path that had chosen them.

The melon princess prepared for the wedding.




 

 

When he awoke the next morning it was to an empty bed, and when his eyes had adjusted to the daylight he found Rizuka sitting silently by the mirror in the hall, peering into it. She had wrapped Arthur’s bathrobe around her, and her knees peeked out from beneath it. “You’re awake,” she said.

“I am,” Arthur responded. He went to her and wrapped his arms around her, kissing the side of her neck. She leaned into him, eying him with a self-satisfied smirk, and then turned back to the mirror.

“Why did I have eyelid surgery?” she muttered. “My eyes were fine before.”

“They’re fine now,” Arthur told her, pulling her out of the chair and scooping her up. He’d done that only once since he met her, but she seemed even lighter and thinner now than she had before. She let out an undignified squawk and demanded to be put down, she wasn’t his toy, but Arthur kept his arms around her, deposited her on the bed, and then joined her there. She fixed him with her wide stare as he tugged the robe off her shoulders.

“Darling,” she said after he had kissed her down into the pillows, her voice warm. “Let’s go on a trip someplace. You can do that for a wedding, right?”

Arthur pulled back. “We can’t,” he said. “You’re speaking at the Japanese Couture Association on Friday.” Rizuka blinked at him, looking unimpressed.

“And I have work to do,” Arthur added. “Rizuka and I, we discussed this.”

He realized what he had said immediately, and drew back in alarm. Her expression did not change, but she stared at him silently.

After another confused moment, Arthur continued, “But I’m not meeting with our clients until Thursday. You would have to postpone some of your appointments, but arrangements can be made.”

She relaxed, so subtly Arthur almost didn’t realize she had been tense a moment before. The tightness went out of her face, and her shoulders unclenched. “Good,” she said, giving him a lopsided grin. “I know where I want to go.”

She leaned in, still studying Arthur intently, her eyes wide and earnest as Arthur tilted his head to kiss her. “You’ll take me, right?” she said when they drew apart slightly, her breath warm against his lips. “Anywhere I want to go?”

“Yes,” said Arthur.

  
  
  
  
  
  


As it turned out, they didn’t have to go far.

“You—you aren’t supposed to know about this,” Arthur said, gaping as Rizuka pulled out the PASIV and began unspooling the cannula tubes as though she were long-acquainted with it. “How did you know?”

“I know lots of things, darling,” she said. “Come under with me.”

“I’ve given it up,” Arthur said, balking as she placed the vial of Somnacin inside the PASIV. “We all—we gave it up when we went to work for Saito. No one was supposed to know.”

“And yet I know,” she said, winking. “Come with me. Come under with me, darling, just for a moment.” And she was inserting the cannula needle into her vein herself, sliding to sleep almost before he could articulate his protest.

He followed her under.

He emerged on the roof of an immense skyscraper, overlooking a vast city with impossible architectural marvels spread out before him like a gleaming silver tapestry. They were floating on the surface of the ocean; channels and canals wound between the buildings interchangeably with the streets; the city bobbed atop the waves, and Arthur could feel the ripples of the current beneath him and all around him; but the city kept its shape; the buildings stood firm and unyielding atop the tumescent sea.

“Where are we?” he asked, turning to Rizuka—but instead of Rizuka, he found himself looking at a man, a bit shorter than Arthur but broader, handsomer.  He had short hair, the color and texture of sparrows’ wings, and huge, alert eyes whose golden color was no longer muted by the dark brown that had belonged to Rizuka.  His face, beautiful and lined, seemed to shift in and out of character even as Arthur watched it. The man looked back at Arthur as though he was utterly expected.

“You know where we are,” he said. “We’re in your mind. In the city you’ve created while you’ve been sleeping all these years.” He looked around. “You’ve been busy.”

“I was asleep,” Arthur said.

“You’re not asleep now,” the man who was and was not Rizuka said. He held out an object to Arthur and Arthur laughed when he realized it was the harness of a zip line.

“I saw this in a movie once,” he said, allowing the man to slip the harness around him, locking the handle securely in his hands. “Where do you think it goes?”

The man grinned. “It’s your dream. You tell me.”

“Everywhere,” Arthur answered. “It’s interconnected to buildings all throughout the city.” He walked to the edge of the enormous skyscraper—wary of the hurtling winds that rocketed up the side of the building and threatened to knock him off altogether—and looked down. The water gleamed below like an azure belt. He heard the faint laughter of the man behind him. “I used to come here and mold the city like I was god—fly through the air and skate through buildings like vapor.”

It had been so, so long. Arthur had almost forgotten. Suddenly this, the travesty of almost forgetting, was a weight on his shoulders, a huge unbearable sorrow. He turned. “Did you know about this?”

The man who was not Rizuka blinked at him. “I knew about you,” he said. “I know what you are.”

He reached up and tugged on the zipline. “I’ll be right behind you,” he said.

Arthur gripped the harness in his hands. He ran and he jumped over the edge.

And flew.

  
  


 

At any other time, Arthur thought, Mal would have been too serious for Arthur’s liking. Now she just sounded terribly amused.

“I don’t quite understand what the problem seems to be, Arthur,” she said. “Would you run it by me again?”

“Something is different about Rizuka,” Arthur said. “She’s not herself.”

“You extended your wedding vacation four days just to spend time alone with her,” Mal said. “It doesn’t seem as though you’re worried.” She chuckled. “Perhaps you’re just concerned because you’re enjoying yourself too much.

“That’s not it,” Arthur replied, remembering how he had pulled her to him after the dream, how he had kissed her, had pushed her down into the bedsheets; how he had needed more of her, and how it had felt, the rawness as she clung to him—to him, who had never had to have more of anyone in his life.

It irritated him that Mal could speak so lightly of that afternoon, even though Mal, of all people, knew what it was like; she had been the one who had stayed under longer than any of the others. She had been the one who convinced them all to return to the real world after their work for Saito had ended.

But he wondered if anything she had experienced had felt as pure, as wide-open and endlessly fantastical, as the world he and Rizuka had built for themselves that Saturday during the dream.

No, he decided; there was no way anyone could have known who had not been there—who had not dreamed, had not felt it for themselves.

He took a deep breath. “Do you believe in spirits”? he asked.

“Yes,” Mal responded. “Of course.”

“Do you know of anyone who specializes in mysticism?”

“I don’t,” Mal said serenely. “But my mother can help you.”

“Tell her to expect me tomorrow,” Arthur answered.

“What should I tell her is the problem?” said Mal. “You’re enjoying married life more than you expected, therefore your wife may have been taken over by a ghost?”

Arthur took great satisfaction in disconnecting.

 

  
  
It was very late when Arthur awoke; he could tell instinctively from the weight of the sleep on his eyes and the eerie stillness around him. Rizuka sat at the edge of the bed, her eyes glowing golden like faint hearth coals against the darkness. He studied her. He had seen her at night, like this, many times. Tonight, however, he could not make out the outline of her shape – her angles and planes seemed to shift, to hover between one thing and another, blurry and formless. He rubbed his eyes and sat up.

She looked over at him. “You should go back to sleep, darling,” she said, her voice dark. It reminded Arthur of something, Rizuka’s voice, but he couldn’t place it.

“So should you,” he said.

“Hmph.” She crawled across the covers and lay down next to him. “I’m not sleepy.”

Arthur kissed the top of her head, sliding his fingers over the soft curve of her jawline, down over her neck. She tilted her head back and looked up at him.

“Are you happy?” Arthur asked her on impulse.

She tucked the blankets over them and moved closer against him, slipping her arms around his waist. “Almost,” she said, and leaned her head against his chest. Arthur watched as she yawned and closed her eyes, listening to her breathing grow deeper and slower.

“It’s just... it gets tiring being one thing all the time,” she murmured, before turning her head and drifting to sleep in his arms.

Arthur thought he understood.

 

  
  
The next day, he failed to keep his appointment with Mal’s mother.

  
  
  
  


The trickster looks around at the bare walls and floor. You have nothing of value, he scoffs. Nothing at all.

Silk threads are expensive, so we must live humbly. I will make you the coat for which you have asked.

The trickster reaches out with his bony long finger, pointing to the coat that hangs on the wall. That one, he says, will do just as well.

That is the coat I have sewn for my husband. We are to be married tonight in the church.

And what will you wear to this festive occasion? That dress, he says, pointing, should make it a match.

He runs the fine-woven cloth under his fingers. She shivers and draws it away from his touch.

You are welcome, good traveler, to join in our wedding. My husband-to-be has prepared a great feast.

He looks her over, yellow eyes bright. So perhaps I shall, for I have such a hunger. I shall try this coat on, I am sure it will fit.

She draws back, now clutching the coat tightly in her hands.

My husband alone shall wear this tonight.

His eyes flit back and forth between the two wedding suits, the coat and the gown. Such a beautiful dress, he murmurs. Won’t you see how it looks?

My husband alone shall behold me tonight.

The trickster scowls. His scowl grows deeper, and darker, like the thick forest outside the melon princess’s door.

Ah, but you’ll make an exception for me, he says, holding out his hand.

Won’t you, my princess? Won’t you let me see?

 




 

On the first day back from his extended wedding vacation, Arthur left Rizuka curled up sleeping in bed, hugging her pillow and mumbling incoherencies when Arthur clambered out much later than he was used to. On his way out he noticed that the PASIV was out in the open, standing by the bedside. After a moment’s hesitation, he left it there and headed into the city.

Returning to the firm after the respite of five days away made him all the more aware of how time had slowed down over the break. He shouldn’t have been this reluctant to return to routine, but instead he found himself unable to focus fully, always tempted by thoughts of Rizuka, impressions of his mouth on her skin and her arms clinging to him, pulling him into her.

Midday a personal call came through. “Arthur!” exclaimed the voice on the other end. “I’m so sorry to call you at work, but you have to make Riza-chan answer her phone!”

It was Yurihana, the maid of honor. Arthur tried to remember if Rizuka had even spoken to her after the ceremony.

“She has to speak at the Couture Association tonight,” said Yurihana, “and I haven’t heard from her since you got married! I don’t know what she’s going to wear, I don’t know when she wants to do the press shoot, and she cannot show up with the hair she had at the wedding—I’m sorry, but did she even go to her stylist before the church?”

“You should plan on keeping things as simple as possible,” said Arthur. He looked down at his desk, neatly covered in zoning laws, property lawsuits, and urban planning ordinances. He suddenly felt very tired.

“Simple, huh,” said Yurihana. “I wonder what’s gotten into Rizuka. Now she hasn’t been heard from in days and all the time she was putting up such a fuss.”

“We were on our wedding vacation,” said Arthur. “What do you mean by putting up a fuss?”

“Oh, nothing.” Yurihana snorted. “Just she didn’t seem nearly this enthusiastic about being married before the wedding. We went out to the clubs the night before, when she called you. She had been having a great time all evening, partying, living it up, everything you’re supposed to do, you know? And then she got upset at karaoke, after she called you. She kept talking about how it was stupid, everything was stupid, you were stupid, weddings were stupid, money was stupid. She was  _ being _ stupid.

“We came outside the club and she kept ranting and ranting—she said, ‘I wish I weren’t getting married tomorrow. I wish I were someone else.’ I said, ‘Look, you’re just drunk,’ and she just kept saying it—‘No, I wish I were someone else.’ But then she calmed down a little, we had our fortunes told, and she was fine after that. And now she’s been spending all her time with you, right?”

Arthur sat down at his desk. “She didn’t tell me she had her fortune told,” he said. “It must have been good, since she came to the wedding.”

“Yeah, there was this man,” Yurihana said. “By the entrance to the club. I think he was British. Lots of tattoos—really hot. When we came out, Riza was half-crying and talking about how she wished she weren’t getting married and the guys was like, ‘Hey, if you’re getting married, why not have your fortune told.’ So I told her we should do it because it would cheer us both up, right? Anyway, it was a lark. He took me into the alley behind the club and then read my palm.” She laughed. “He told me I was going to have a kid soon and I told him, not on my salary! I don’t know what he told Riza, but when she came back, she was smiling a lot.”

“I thought you wanted to be a mother,” Arthur said. “Rizuka said something about it once.”

“Well, yeah,” said Yurihana, sounding mildly irritated at the thought. “Everybody says stuff like that. But nobody ever really wants what they say they want.”

Arthur was silent in response. “I’ll tell Rizuka you called.”

“She’ll be at the banquet tonight, right? You’re not going to make her miss so you can honeymoon, are you? She’s getting some sort of award, but you didn’t hear that from me.”

“She’ll be there,” said Arthur.

He disconnected and called his house. It went to the answering machine, as he had known it would.

“Turn your phone on,” he commanded. “Rizuka’s—” he hesitated. “Your friends are trying to reach you. You should let them.”

He disconnected. Then he sat at his desk in thought until his next clients showed up to discuss the zoning restrictions around their latest multi-family housing complex.  
  
“Hey,” Rizuka called when Arthur arrived home that evening. “You shouldn’t have made me turn my phone back on. People keep calling.”

“People want your attention,” Arthur said. “That’s usually a good thing.”

“Hmph,” she said.

“You should talk to them.” Arthur looked around for her as he sat down his briefcase and deposited his coat in the foyer. It was not a terribly large apartment, but she seemed to have disappeared in it.

“Whatever,” she said. “It’s not like they need me for anything.”

Arthur could hear her clomping around, and followed the noise of heels scraping awkwardly against his wooden floors. He found her in the guest bedroom, making exasperated faces at herself in the mirror.

“Your creepy friend called,” she said irritably. “She wanted to know how it went, whatever that means.”

“Mal,” said Arthur, coming over to her. She was struggling with the pearls at her throat. He took them from her, fingers brushing her wrist, and fastened the chain in the back.

“She said I was a bad influence on you—but I think she was joking.” She sounded bored, but she was watching Arthur from lowered eyes. Arthur let his fingers rest against the back of her neck. “I told her she was odd and neither of us wanted to talk to her. She just laughed and said I’d changed.” She rolled her eyes.

Arthur let his hands trail down her sides, lingering on the curve of her stomach, the movement of her hips. She was wearing an indigo gown, long and unadorned, and was standing, legs awry, in tall black heels. She had a smear of lipstick on her chin, and Arthur spotted a tiny dollop of shaving cream on the back of one knee.

“You look lovely,” he said. “And it’s good that you turned your phone back on.” Their eyes met in the mirror and she looked down, cheeks flushing.

“This is so stupid,” she grumbled. “I haven’t even done my hair.”

Arthur touched the pearls at her throat. “I gave you these,” he said. “As an engagement present.”

She turned around to face him. He found himself trying to remember what color her eyes used to be, before the wedding, before they seemed to flicker constantly with flecks of gold.

“You did,” she said.

“I did.”

“Did I seem glad?” she said, curling her arms around his waist. “When you asked me to marry you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Arthur. She let out an irritated huff. “I don’t think you liked my choice of location,” Arthur conceded. “I asked you at the restaurant we went on our first date. Nothing very creative.”

She smirked. “You should have asked somewhere private. Somewhere with more imagination.”

“Yeah,” said Arthur. “I should have.”

She tilted her head back and looked up at him, the smirk fading. “So ask me again, darling,” she said. Her expression grew serious. “Ask me to stay with you.”

Arthur looked at her for what felt like a very long moment.

“I can’t,” he said at last. “I have to change, and you have to do your hair.”

“Ah,” she said. “Of course.” She looked down and hurriedly turned back to the mirror.

Arthur pulled her back around and kissed her, long and hard, until her lips became warm and eager again and the smile returned to her face. The remonstration remained in her eyes, however – even after she had done her hair and mastered the concept of eyeliner, and stood, smug and beautiful, admiring the result.

“How do I look?” she said, giving her hair a satisfied flip.

“Perfect,” said Arthur, and the last traces of reproach vanished.

  
  
  
  
Being with Rizuka, Arthur was used to having cameras shoved in his face, but he had not realized quite how high-profile the Couture Association’s annual banquet was until they arrived and found themselves entering the ballroom along with fashion moguls and pop stars, with cameras going off in their faces every few steps. Rizuka scowled in annoyance, rolled her eyes at someone Arthur vaguely recognized as a famous J-pop star when she complimented Rizuka’s dress, and stalked through the hotel, dragging Arthur with her. One inside the organizers promptly separated the two of them, and placed Rizuka at a long row of chairs onstage with Arthur at a table near the front.

Arthur had been with Rizuka at events like these before. They had met at one, just over 18 months before, at a conference on urban development, where he had been the one making the speech and she had been the one representing Saito’s energy conglomerate, exuding wealth and power. She had come to every meeting with her hair perfect, her nails done, her wardrobe brightly colored and revealing. She had, Arthur thought, viewed the whole thing as a publicity op for herself and her family, and he had largely ignored her until she had approached him after a discussion and asked him to have lunch. She had proven to be witty and vivacious, and it wasn’t until the end of the day that he learned she was Saito’s niece.

He had quickly learned that it was in her family’s interests that she have an escort, and after the third time she had asked him to be her guest at some glittering social function, Arthur had asked her if he was attending on business or pleasure. She had laughed her sparkling laugh, and informed him that if she had waited around for him to ask her out, she would have been waiting forever. ”And I’m really very impatient.”

She was one of only a handful of women Arthur had dated since quitting dreamshare. She had delighted his friends and he had pleased hers. Saito practically did everything but buy them a honeymoon suite when he learned they were dating. She had introduced him into circles of society that his business relationships had never particularly allowed him to enter before. Three months after they met, Arthur had been promoted to the top level of architects at the firm he and Mal worked at, despite being one of the youngest there. He had not been naïve enough to think that he owed it all to his own merit.

Rizuka liked to be doing things. They were both obsessively active, and Arthur liked this about her; he had taken relief in it, at times. She was devoted to her job even though its nebulous parameters seemed to change every time Arthur asked; he had spent most of the first months of their relationship trying to figure out what her job actually involved before realizing that she was, essentially, a glamorous manager for her uncle, where “management” could mean anything from event planning to money laundering. She did it all very well. When Arthur spoke before an audience, he was direct and probably boring. Rizuka, on the other hand, acted and spoke like a celebrity, and in a way Arthur supposed she was. The announcement of their engagement had certainly been treated like a public affair. If Rizuka had ever noticed how uncomfortable Arthur was made by public displays, she steadfastly overlooked the issue—probably, Arthur thought, because she knew that as her husband, he would have to become accustomed to them.

And so he had, he supposed; certainly it no longer fazed him to be seated next to a pop star, or have the Ambassador to Singapore approach to ask him a question about industrial development. Tonight’s event was being held for a charity fashion of some sort. Arthur suspected it was the case that the charity was fashionable rather than that fashion was working to promote the good of mankind; but he sat obligingly at his table near the front of the room nonetheless, withholding his opinions as always, and watching the table onstage where Rizuka currently sat, fidgeting and looking restless.

Arthur couldn't take his eyes off of her.

It was this he found unsettling as he adjusted to the crowd, the cameras flashing, the socialites glittering and tittering around him. Arthur had never been comfortable in this world, but she had always guided him through it, with the ease of long practice. Now, though, she looked bored and uneasy; her eyes darted about the room, returning to him every few seconds. Whenever someone spoke to her she tilted her head and replied to them with the same smirk Arthur had come to know so well over the previous week. Whoever had approached her inevitably retreated looking slightly disconcerted, and Rizuka invariably turned back to Arthur with the smugness still on her face.

Arthur tried to look disapproving, but it was difficult, since her smirk only grew bigger with his attempts to frown. Mostly, he just looked back at her, their locked gazes reminding him of locked hands and open mouths and clenched bodies, of her eyes flashing golden beneath him.

He felt as if the days since his wedding had been spent in a blissful, ill-considered isolation. The brightness of the hotel ballroom, the noise, the activity around him – all these things were just a bit disconcerting, as if he were just now returning to the world and finding it less brilliant than he would have liked. He saw, too, more clearly than he had yet been able to let himself when they were alone, how different Rizuka was. Her entire demeanor had changed.

Arthur had always known, but in public the difference was stark and undeniable.

Her hair was still the same, long and inky, never dyed; her skin was pale, smooth, irresistible to touch; she had wide, full lips that begged to be kissed. She radiated a certain type of beauty, the kind possessed by women who had paid great attention to their looks for many, many years: it was natural beauty, but also beauty that staked a claim to self-preservation; the kind that had been bought and paid for.

And yet she looked completely different. Her dark eyes still flashed with wit, only it was a piercing, unsettling kind, and Arthur saw the flecks of gold within them so often that he could not remember what color her eyes had been before. She rarely brushed her hair, and since she had never returned her stylist’s baffled phone calls her hair was done as plainly, her makeup applied as minimally, as Arthur had ever witnessed. Everything about her seemed somehow less polished, uneven at the edges. When she walked she dangled her arms as if she weren’t quite sure what to do with them, with limbs that long; when she sat down she slumped, and when she stood back up again she wobbled. She walked in high heels as though she were still trying to figure out how they worked—nothing like the sheer assertive confidence Rizuka had always demonstrated in a pair of pumps, a calm Arthur had half-envied, half been utterly baffled by. Her voice was charged with innuendo whenever she spoke, regardless of what she actually said. It was darker, more playful. She watched him always, as if she were constantly probing behind his silence and finding new things to interest her there.

Arthur had found more new things to interest him in the last five days than he had in all the previous time they had been together.

When the time came for Rizuka to give her speech, Arthur tensed. He had no idea what she was planning to speak about; neither, he suspected, did she.

She received a very flattering introduction. Arthur had not told her about the award which she was to receive, and upon reflection he was glad that he had not. Whatever Rizuka’s expectations of the evening, being handed a gold statuette in the shape of a stiletto and receiving an ovation for her outstanding achievements in representing the world of fashion had clearly not been a part of them.

She stared at the object blankly for a long moment while the applause died down around her. She cast a look at her presenter—Arthur wondered how she managed to remember the woman’s name, but when she hadn’t been gazing at Arthur she had been glancing at the program menu—and thanked her.

She looked over the banquet hall and flipped her hair a little.

Arthur ignored his sudden sense of foreboding.

“This”—she held up the statuette in her hand. “This kind of award. It’s not for me. It’s for you.”

There was a slight murmur in the audience, as if they weren’t sure whether to laugh. When she spoke again, her voice was different. It was low, and the sulkiness had gone out of it. It sounded somehow much older than the body it was in.

“Each of you want what you can’t have,” she said coldly, scanning the crowd. “You want an eternity. Eternal beauty, eternal youth, eternal time. The more time threatens to gobble you up, the more you try to outrace it. Fashion is the illusion that you can cover up your secrets. The illusion that you’re not really growing old. That you’re not really going to die.”

The audience had gone utterly still. Arthur could feel the silence, a chill beneath his skin.

“So every year you give this to the person who’s done the best job at covering up their secrets,” she said. “So you can tell yourselves you’re all doing a great job at hiding. This year I’m the one doing the great job.” Her eyes were dark, glittering with something Arthur had never seen in them before.

“But my secret is the same as yours,” she said. “You want to know what it is?”

She leaned into the microphone and her voice dropped even lower.

“One day,” she said, “your perfectly moisturized skin will rot. It will slide away from your bones. Your flesh will break apart into particles and seep into the soil. Your hair and your fingernails will turn dry and brittle, and parasites and pests will grow inside of it. Your souls will lose the perfect bodies you paid so much for, and the perfect clothes you fit them in will mildew and mold until they and what’s left of your skin are one and the same.”

She paused. “Your lives are the biggest lie of all,” she said. She took a deep breath and looked around a little, shoulders sagging.

Then she said petulantly, “So stop making shoes that hurt people’s feet.”

With a huff of indignation, Rizuka stalked offstage, leaving her stiletto plaque by the podium.

Arthur found his mouth was open slightly. He shut it as Rizuka tromped over to him. “Can we go now?” she said, giving him a pleading look. “This dress itches.”

“Yes,” said Arthur, rising calmly from his seat.

He was never quite sure how they made it out of the ballroom accompanied only by utter silence. He suspected that it had something to do with the dark look still fading at the edges of Rizuka’s eyes. As they reached the back entrance, smatterings of applause broke out across the room, an unsteady wave of confusion.

It was a good thing becoming a fashion mogul had never been high on Rizuka’s list of priorities, Arthur thought.

As they left the hotel, someone called Rizuka's name. It was Yurihana, emerging from the ballroom. As she approached, Arthur could tell she had either been crying or was very near it.

"I don't know what's happening," she said, her voice shaking. She looked at Rizuka carefully. "I know you—I've known you forever. This isn't you. You won't return my phone calls, you won't talk to me, you act like you barely know me tonight and at the wedding, and now this." She grabbed Rizuka's hand and held it. "It's been like this ever since that night at the club. Was it that fortuneteller?" She glanced warily at Arthur. "What did he tell you, Riza? That night when he told you your fortune, what did he say?"

Rizuka withdrew her hand and stared at Yurihana. "You're pregnant, aren't you?" she said.

A look of deep hurt crossed Yurihana's face, and she drew back, tears starting down her cheeks. "Screw you," she said, and she shook her head at Rizuka accusingly, before turning and fleeing into the bathroom.

Arthur and Rizuka stood looking at her for a moment before Rizuka turned and looked up at him. "So can we go home now?" she said.

Arthur cast her a long look. "Yes," he said finally, and took her home.

 

 

“What you describe may be an ama-no-jaku,” Mal’s mother, Marie, said, consulting a thick volume of texts purporting to contain a categorical listing of all Japanese spirits, mythological and otherwise. Arthur refused to ponder how Mal’s mother came to own such a thing.

“They’re imps,” she added, pushing up her reading glasses. “Supposedly they wander the earth in search of a permanent form, changing their shape and occasionally granting—”

“Grandmaman, where’d you put the dumplings?”

“—granting wishes,” Marie finished. “James ate the last of them last night.”

“What? But he knew I had dibs on the last ones!” Philippa poked her head around the doorframe, looking gangly and younger than her 15 years. “Oh, hi, Uncle Arthur.”

“Yes,” Marie said, amused. “He did know.”

“You haven’t visited us in a while,” Philippa said, looking interestedly at the spread of books over the floor of the Cobbs’ living room. “What’s going on?”

“Arthur’s wife has been possessed by a spirit,” Marie said, calmly turning the page.

Philippa’s eyes widened. “Like a demon?” She sat down across from Arthur and peered at the book. “Why would an evil spirit want to possess your wife?”

“Not evil,” said Arthur, resigning himself to the inevitability of the entire Cobb family knowing far more about him than he would have liked. He addressed Marie. “If the spirit was trying to grant some sort of wish…”

Marie shook her head. “I didn’t finish. The ama-no-jaku may play tricks on the unsuspecting by granting them wishes they don’t really want or that somehow turn out to be harmful.”

Arthur thought of Yurihana telling him, No one ever really wants what they say they want.

“What can be done to restore the spirit of the person whose body they have taken over?” he asked.

Marie frowned. “That’s where it gets complicated,” she said, consulting a different book. “Very little is known about what happens to the ama-no-jaku after they’ve played their tricks. In the case of possessions…” She read, then paused. “The most famous example involves an ama-no-jaku devouring a prince’s bride-to-be on her wedding day and then wearing her skin to the wedding.”

After a shocked silence, Philippa burst out, “You mean it _ate_ your fiancée?”

“It didn’t kill her,” Arthur said, as calmly as possible under the circumstances.

“How do you know that?” said Philippa, her eyes wider than ever.

“I just... I just know,” Arthur answered, ignoring her baffled expression.

Marie gave him a shrewd look. “In the legend the demon was eventually cast out and killed,” she said. “Arthur, casting out this demon will be dangerous. Your wife, if she is even alive, could be forever separated from her body.”

Arthur thought for a moment. “Does the spirit have a way to bind itself to the body it’s in?” he asked. “You said they search for a permanent home.”

“If the demon is asked or invited to stay,” Marie read, “It will be permanently bound to the shell of the person it has possessed.”

Philippa drew in a breath. “Wedding vows,” she said. “If Uncle Arthur said ‘I do’ and the demon said ‘I do,’ then—”

“Til death do us part,” Marie interrupted, looking at Arthur.

“It hasn’t bound itself,” Arthur answered. He thought of Rizuka looking pleadingly up at him. Ask me to stay, she had said. “The wedding vows did not affect it.”

“Why not?” asked Philippa.

“Mischief,” said Marie. “It’s an imp, and they are restless. If it just wanted to teach the person a lesson, then perhaps it had no desire to seal itself permanently to the body of Arthur’s wife.”

She paused. “Why would it change its mind, Arthur?”

Both grandmother and granddaughter looked at Arthur expectantly.

“It hasn’t sealed itself yet,” he repeated firmly.

“Ah,” said Marie expressionlessly. She took off her reading glasses, and Arthur was instantly, uncomfortably reminded of the resemblance between her and Mal. “So you want to cast it out while you still have time.”

“Yes.”

“You have several traditional options,” she said, as practically as if she were telling him the recipe for apple pie. “You can trap it in a circle of thirteen candles, and then blow them out one at a time, saying the name of the person you wish to return to you. You can administer holy water to it while asking the gods to release your wife and destroy the spirit—”

“No,” said Arthur. “I don’t wish to harm it.”

“You might not have a choice,” Marie said.

“No, no,” said Philippa, jumping up excitedly. “In the movies they always put the spirit into a jar, right? Like in Ghostbusters?”

They stared at her.

“You just have to have an alternate energy source powerful enough to suck the demon out,” Philippa said. “Either that or an object that’s tied to it in some way, that you can use to bind it to its new container. You don’t happen to know if it carries around an urn, do you? Or like maybe an ankh?”

Arthur hesitated.

“Maybe,” he said at last, “I could just ask.”

  
  
  
She is not afraid of the finger curving across her neck, down the back of her spine as she undresses.

She does not fear the embrace of this monster, or the mouth twisting her own into profanations.

She stands before him, the melon princess, cupping her breasts in her hands, tracing her points and peaks where they firm and harden, ripening to readiness.

The ceremonial dress, when he cloaks her in it, is soft luxury against her skin. He watches her watch him as he pulls it down over her head. She catches her reflection staring back—her mirror self bridally flushed against swathes of silk and saffron thread.

He helps her to dress, to fasten the dress behind, to slide her underthings under her skirts. His fingers trace the pattern of the brocade. She turns beneath him and fastens the buttons, over the sleeves and down the front of the white brocaded coat.

When she is fully dressed, the trickster slips his arms around her waist. She allows him. His hands move up and up, and his voice lies warm and thick against her neck. She allows that, as well.

Let me come in, the trickster says. Let me, oh, let me come.

She closes her eyes. The ritual begins.




  
  
  
  
The apartment was dark when Arthur returned to it. He paused on the threshold for a moment, wondering if she was out. For a moment he hoped childishly that she was: that she was gone, or perhaps asleep. Then a faint sound recalled him to his senses and drew him down the hall, stomach tightening as he moved toward the bedroom.

She sat at the edge of their bed in the dark, the lines of her body merging with the other blurry forms in the room. She was holding a round hand mirror and looking into it silently. She didn’t look up when Arthur stopped in the doorway. He watched her for a moment, then crossed the room and lit a candle. The light glanced sharply across her face, flickering in contrast to the steady shimmer of gold in her eyes. She looked pale and sad.

“You’re late,” she said, raising her head at last.

“I’m sorry,” Arthur said, lighting another candle. “I paid a visit to a friend.”

“Oh,” she said. She watched Arthur as he moved to the third candle, and he watched her as he lit the taper. “How many of those are you going to light?”

Arthur made no answer, but moved to the fourth candle.

She sighed. She gave one last look at herself in the mirror, and then stood up.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said. It was the first time since they had met Arthur had ever heard her sound defeated.

“Wait,” Arthur said.

She did. She came to stand beside him, grasping his arm as he lit the fifth, sixth, and seventh candles.

“You’re supposed to have more,” she said, looking at the fully lit row along the windowsill.

“We have enough,” Arthur said, and pulled her to him. She wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned against him, though she was not the clinging sort. Arthur smoothed her hair back away from her face and kissed her skin. Her cheek under his fingertips was smooth and warm, her throat pulsing where his lips pressed against it. She could be, he thought, more vividly alive just by being than anyone else Arthur had ever met.

“What will happen,” he said softly, “if you tell me your name?”

Her arms around his waist clenched at this, and she turned her face into his shoulder. “Are you going to send me away?” she said, her voice muffled against his shirt.

“If it’s the only way to bring her back, then yes,” Arthur responded.

“She’s dead,” she snapped. “I killed her and took her skin.”

“Then where is her body so that she may be buried?” Arthur responded, as calmly as he could through the faint tremor in his voice.

“I—I don’t know where she is,“ she muttered. “I sent her away. She said she wanted to be someone else so I let her.”

Arthur studied her. “Why did you take me under that day?” he said. “Into the dream.”

She raised her head, scowling as hard as she could. It wasn’t enough to distract Arthur from the fact that her eyes were red-rimmed. “I wanted to give you a wish.”

Arthur kissed her on the mouth, feeling her intake of breath and the release all through her body when she responded. He put his hands over hers and drew her closer, letting her pull him across the room towards their bed. When she slid her hands up his waist he caught them and held them firmly in his own. “Tell me your name,” he said.

She let out a tiny, strangled noise of protest. “No,” she said, pulling her hands free. “You’ll make me leave.”

She sat down on the bed and stared down at the floor. She looked very young suddenly, and very unhappy.

Arthur sat down gently next to her, covering her hand with his own. She sighed. “I don’t want to go,” she said. “I like it here.”

“We have to bring her back,” Arthur said.

“Because you miss her?”

“Yes,” Arthur answered, meeting her eyes. “And because it’s right.”

She was silent for a long moment, looking up at him. Finally she rose from the bed and calmly undressed.

Her hands made swift and efficient work of the clothes, Arthur’s clothes, which she still preferred to wear over what had been Rizuka’s. When she was completely undressed she looked down at herself, then at Arthur, her expression unreadable. Arthur watched her in silence.

Then she stretched, a luxurious stretch that showed the long, taut planes of her body, smooth white curves over firm muscle. When she relaxed, however, Arthur drew back. Her skin was suddenly loose, her hair hanging low and uneven on a scalp that seemed to sag; it was as if all her flesh had suddenly become unmoored, as if it were floating atop rather than anchored to the hard body beneath it. Arthur watched, ignoring the automatic fear that twisted his stomach. The flaccid skin seemed to ripple as she moved – as she lifted her arms to her head and calmly removed the mask that had been her face.

Arthur saw pale skin replaced by even paler skin, translucent white patches where the garment that was Rizuka’s body peeled apart from its frame. The hair was black beneath the disguise, the bare shoulders thick and coiled with muscle. The outer skin slid away as easily as an overcoat.

He stepped out of it and held it carefully, lovingly, draping it over itself, thick lines of flesh settling against one another. He folded it over once more, and then laid it on Arthur’s chair.

Then he turned around.

It was the man from the dream. In reality his face was sharper and younger. He wore nothing, and his skin was marbled with swirling ink like runes across his sides and arms. After a moment he reached down and pulled Arthur’s shirt back on. It was taut and tight across his thick chest, his broad shoulders.

He struck Arthur as a thousand years of contrasts jostling awkwardly together in one lean body—an eternal teen in a man’s form, Arthur thought. His eyes, the lines of his mouth, the faint, currently nervous smirk, were somehow boyish and ancient at once.

Arthur stared at him. He stared back, his gaze sharp.

“My name is Eames,” he said.

“Eames,” said Arthur.

He took a step forward. Eames backed up quickly.

“If you touch me when I’m like this I’ll have to go,” he said.

“You have to,” Arthur said, taking another step. “You have to bring her back.”

“You don’t want me to stay,” Eames said flatly. He was trying to scowl, but the note of desperation in his voice belied whatever anger he felt.

“I want,” Arthur said, and stopped. Eames looked at him, and Arthur found that upon meeting his eyes he could not finish his sentence.

“You’re an ass,” Eames said finally, stepping into his arms. He was warm and solid, and Arthur held on to him.

“I know,” Arthur said.

“I would have stayed with you forever,” Eames said, looking at him.

“I know,” said Arthur.

When they kissed he felt Eames’ hands, thicker and wider than Rizuka’s, reaching up and clutching at him. He felt Eames’ mouth, plush and broad, opening beneath his, kissing back recklessly, urgently. He felt heat surge through him, felt Eames scrambling to get closer to him, felt an unbearable yearning to give and take more than he possibly could. Eames burrowed against him, and Arthur held him as tightly as he could, though the lines of his body were already shifting and growing lighter.

Eames pulled back long enough to look at him with his sharp, glittering eyes. “Darling,” he murmured, in a voice that was somehow breathy and hard, full and empty, all at once.

Then he was gone.

  
  
  
Arthur stood still, alone with the garment of skin that Eames had deposited on his armchair as calmly as if he were folding laundry. He stared at it, frozen in the timeless silence of the room as if each new moment might bring a sound, a movement, a motion to bring Rizuka back. 

There was nothing, just Arthur, the chair with its fading floral print, and the calico imprint of her remains. Remains. The word was a deep and bitter irony.

He wrapped her skin in the folds of her favorite dress.

  
  
She does not ask if it will hurt.

She has heard the stories of creatures in the woods, of children who go too long concealed.

The fairies will find you out, they say;

the demons will find you and steal you from your bed during the night.

The stories never tell of the children who want to be stolen; the ones who go looking for fairies.

The trickster carefully removes the buttons she has sewn into the fine white coat.

He unwraps the skirts from between her knees. Beneath the coat he is rough-skinned and raw. She wonders what it will feel like, her skin against his, her soft skin in his hands, under his touch. 

He folds himself into her like a cloak.

She does not ask what will come after this.

She does not ask if it will hurt to be devoured.

 




For the next week after reporting Rizuka’s disappearance, Arthur was extremely careful. Considering that he was the last person to have seen his wife alive, the police investigating his case were extremely polite to him. He imagined that it had something to do with the dark circles under his eyes, the way he quite honestly could not answer when they asked him if he had any idea where his wife might be.

He went to work every day as usual. Ordinances and blueprints piled up around him and he went about handling zoning procedures as systematically as he had in the days before memories of Rizuka—of Eames—monopolized all his thoughts.

Rizuka’s mother called every night. She sent round catered food dishes as if she thought Arthur would forget to eat. He ate the sushi rolls she sent each evening, dutifully, and called Saito to report that he had not heard anything from her. Her friends called; he returned their calls routinely until he found that he had said all he could say.

He returned the calls of the policemen as well. He answered their questions and gave them access to the rooms of his house. They searched his bedroom, Rizuka’s closets, the kitchen, the bath. They ran their hands over the books on Arthur’s shelves and thumbed through the magazines and Sudoku puzzles lying on the coffee table. They asked Arthur ridiculous questions, about his wife’s sleeping and eating habits, about their sex life, about her erratic behavior the week before her disappearance. 

They did not ask him about the video games Eames had played, or silver briefcase in the corner of the hall, or the faded sweatshirts and t-shirts lying in a careless pile in the laundry room. 

One week after Arthur had unwrapped Eames and kissed him goodbye, he walked into his office and calmly resigned.

“I need to look for my wife,” he told the president of the architecture firm. “It will take some time.”

The president placed his hands flat on his desk. “And you are under investigation by the police,” he said.

“Yes,” Arthur said.

When he left the office he carried with him only his overcoat. Everything else he had returned to the company. He went home and sat for a while in his living room, on the couch where he had kissed Eames for the first time. He could feel his memories of Rizuka, of the woman who had been before, fading away, slipping into the stiffening quiet of the house around him.

He called the detective handling Rizuka’s case. “I am checking into a hotel,” he said. “I want to look for my wife. This house is lonely without her.”

“You’re a very devoted husband, Arthur,” said the inspector.

“We’ve only been married a week,” was Arthur’s response.

  
  


With his duties at the firm discharged, Arthur did not return to the house. He slept at the hotel and did his laundry from a worn duffel bag he had not used since his last camping trip in college. He brought the pearls Eames had worn the night of the banquet at the Couture Association. He brought the PASIV device. In the morning, next to his own clothes, he always placed the extra pair of tennis shoes, sweatshirt, and shorts he had brought along.

After spending months in which he was rarely out of doors during the weekday hours, Arthur found that the streets of Tokyo in the midday sun were much brighter than he remembered—blinding and clean, tinctured with heat and white noise. The city seemed to blur and shift at the edges like the outline of Eames’s shape in the morning when Arthur’s eyes were still adjusting to the daylight. It felt surreal and unknown to Arthur when he exited his hotel every morning. It was a starkly different world from the one he had known from the vantage point of the tops of buildings, the view from the rooftops of whole fantasy cities—the dream worlds he had tried to blot out from his memory, tried to forget by fixating on his work, on his new life, on the curves of Rizuka’s elegant shoulders, her full lips and light laughter.

The feeling of dislocation did not bother him. The fact that he was not bothered did.

He did not know how or where to look for Rizuka, so he began with her home. The police had already searched everywhere predictable, so he started in unfamiliar locations. He searched the clubs where she had dragged him in the first weeks of their relationship. He searched the library where she liked to read and the park near it where she had gone for walks. He searched her school, the courtyards near the university, her favorite coffee shop downtown. He contacted old boyfriends and had horrifically awkward conversations about her past relationships in order to recover any information about where she might be.

“You want to find Rizuka?” one of them snorted. “Look in the shopping malls.”

Arthur looked in the shopping malls, though he felt it unlikely Rizuka would be there. He looked in the backs of magazines and the displays of shop windows. He looked wherever his feet took him. He scarcely knew what to look for.

The room at the hotel was surprisingly quiet. He should have been able to sleep but rest was intermittent at night. He looked for Eames in the crevices of the ceiling, in the long flickering shadows on the wall. Sometimes he slept and dreamed that the gold flecks of the brown metallic wallpaper were large round eyes, watching him and calling without words. Once, only once, he hooked himself up to the PASIV. When he opened his eyes below, he was in his waking hotel room, and Eames was kneeling by the side of the bed looking at him. “Darling,” he said. 

“You can’t stay,” said Arthur.

“No,” Eames answered. “Neither can you.”

Arthur leaned forward to kiss him and Eames kissed back. Arthur felt him melting warm and sweet inside of his mouth, melting all over him. He pulled back and looked at the sticky pieces of Eames in his hands. Eames’ skin flowed down over Arthur’s fingers and wrists. It felt smooth like warm toffee, but there was nothing underneath it but air. 

Eames looked down at his vanishing arms, the holes in his thighs where Arthur had placed his hands to pull him closer. “You’re supposed to know how to fix this,” he said irritably.

“I need time to think,” Arthur said.

“Don’t,” said Eames.. He looked reproachfully at Arthur. “You shouldn’t have started.”

“I had to,” said Arthur. “I have to find her.”

“She doesn’t want to be found,” said Eames. “You should stop looking.”

Arthur took Eames’ face into his hands and he melted into them, a warm pale mess in his palms. Arthur wasn’t sure what to do with the puddle of Eames, so he got up to wash his hands. He let the water run over them, watching the way the light refracted off the water and his skin, until the timer wore down.

When he woke up, he was sitting up, in the bed, and there was nothing in the room with him, not even the smell of toffee or the faint scent of Eames’ skin.  
  
  
  


He looked for Rizuka in the mornings and Eames in the afternoons.

He looked for her in her old apartment and the walks between it and downtown Tokyo. He looked for her in cars and on the sides of buildings. He saw her face in fashion magazines and the lifestyle section of the newspaper, but when he spoke to her, she did not respond. He kept looking.

He looked for Eames outside karaoke bars and on interesting street corners and in the temple where they had first met. He looked for him in parks and up trees, on sidewalks and underneath train tracks. He looked for him between the covers when he slept and in the shower when he woke.

He searched for them until he no longer knew which one of them he was looking for. 

Weeks passed; the police investigation fizzled out and Arthur was told by a friendly detective that he could return to his life. “You should go back, Arthur-san,” he said. “You’ll eat up your savings living in a hotel.”

“True,” said Arthur.

He moved out of the hotel but he did not go back.

The karaoke club where Rizuka had gone the night before the wedding was located in the trendiest part of the city: a downtown corner so hip it was backed up against those it excluded, three blocks away from a section of the run-down, pieced-together mass apartment buildings that had sprung up in the ‘70s. Arthur rented one by the month and spent his days exploring the club district, nodding silently each morning to the storefront owners and assistants sweeping out the remnants of last night’s humiliations. It was a strangely quiet district during waking hours, a fading and silent crypt from which the raw, gyrating lifeblood of Tokyo emerged with fangs bared each night around ten o’clock. 

Arthur went near the clubs at night only once, when he recognized a number of Rizuka’s friends outside the roped entrance. He turned to duck into an alley, but before he could do so one of the girls raked her eyes over him, right over him. She had given him a cursory, dismissive glance with no moment of recognition. Arthur thought about how easy it was to get lost in Tokyo. He wondered if any of his friends would have given him the same unknowing once-over. He wondered if, wherever Rizuka was, her friends would have known her now.

He had stopped checking his phone. When he finally returned to it, he found 45 messages from Cobb, 30 from Ariadne, a couple of texts from Nash, even a few voice mails here and there from Saito. Most of Ariadne’s began, “If you’re still searching for her, Arthur, I thought you might want to try looking—” at which point Arthur hung up. Wherever it was, he had already looked.

There was only one phone call from Mal, and it had been sent just the night before. 

“Arthur,” she said, as if the last time they spoke had been a few nights and not weeks before. “I don’t know if you’re still looking, but Marie suggests you try reversing the exhortation spell you used the night you cast out the demon. It might have a summoning effect.” She went on to explain details, an unnecessary addition that Arthur felt was possibly just for the sake of allowing him to hear a familiar voice. When she was done, she added, after a moment’s pause, “Good luck, Arthur. Always.”

Arthur hung up. Good luck, Mal, he thought.

He set the thirteen candles up in a cramped circle in the living room of his tiny apartment. He lit them and went to his suitcase.

The skin was there, still wrapped in saffron silk and a layer of parchment. He took it out and unfolded it gently, reverently. This would work, he thought. He placed her skin in the center of the circle, spreading it out carefully between the lit candles. He recited Rizuka’s name. 

Nothing happened. 

He took the PASIV device and put it in the center of the circle. He recited Eames’ name. Then he called. He pleaded. Nothing happened. He took hold of Rizuka’s skin and clutched it, feeling the waxy flesh beneath his fingers. He held it until he wasn’t sure if he was calling names anymore or not.

He heard Eames’ voice, the voice in his dream. You should stop looking, it said.

He stayed there until the candles had all burned out.  
  
  
  


The next day, the first day after the end of his search, Arthur stepped outside of the musty, small apartment and wondered where to go. He usually walked West to the club districts or took the train down to Rizuka’s old university haunts.

He thought in a detached way of the architecture firm in the heart of the city, the clients with their urban sprawl and zoning laws and blueprints for more housing developments. He thought of the stiletto-heeled achievement award that Eames had tried on and walked away from. He wondered, really for the first time, what Rizuka had walked away from—beyond their marriage, beyond him.  

In the end he changed into his best suit, the one that still made him feel like he had ties to the real world, ties worth returning to—because, he knew, when all this was over, he would have to return or die; and Arthur was not one to look forward to death, however confused he might be about his own life to date.

He took his PASIV and his bag, and headed for the train station.

The train sped southwest, past low-lying mountains and coursing streams, into the comforting regularity of the Kantou Plain. From the window of the train he watched the vegetation along the Yokosuka Railway. The blurry tree line decreased in elevation and increased in the lush, warm colors of an early spring as the train approached Tokyo Bay. He had been many times to Kanagawa on business trips since he started working for Saito and later for the firm, but he had not been to Kamakura since his first trip to Japan many years ago.

He had been new to dreamshare, and the Cobbs had taken him under their wing; the job involved an extraction upon a kindly business mogul from Tokyo, a man whose large family, good standing in the community, and sympathetic eyes belied the ruthless business practices that had brought him to their notice. They were still experimenting and had not yet mastered the art of building a dream world of their own to “trick” the dreamer, and so they let the dreamer themselves dictate the world they wound up in. In those days it was typical for the dreamer to reconstruct scenes from their childhoods. When they went under to extract from the businessman, they found that his dreams were a recreation of his childhood spent fishing together with his father, nestled deep in the lush greenery of Kamakurayama, curled against the foothills of Mt. Fuji.

Arthur had always taken his role in dreamshare very seriously; when it was time to get out he got out, and he was meticulous about never leaving anything of himself behind. That day, however—there was something about the calm of the woods around them, the smell of the waves breaking on the shores of Shichirigahama just a mile or two away; the sheer peace that emanated from every green leaf and sigh of the wind through the trees. It had been the first time Arthur had realized how easily a person could get caught in a dream, could mistake the dream for a reality where everything was fixed, tranquil, unending and perfect.

He hadn’t realized how deeply that dream had sunk into him until he found himself headed to Kamakura on the train. He wondered if this urge to visit it now, to revisit someone else’s past, was a link to Rizuka or an expression of his helplessness, his inability to find her.

The houses and roads into the town looked very much like Arthur had last seen them, nearly a decade earlier. He stepped off the train and relished the strange familiarity of it—the lightweight feel of the air on his skin and the sea in his breath. Here, he thought, looking over the city. I was here, I stood there, and yet I was never here at all.

He checked into a local hotel, settled into his hotel room, and opened the PASIV, letting its contents spill out on the bed. He had only one vial of Somnacin remaining, and it occurred to him that he had been out of the business of dreamshare so long he wouldn’t even know where to procure a refill. He’d not dreamed in so long. He hadn’t really wanted to before Eames, and after Eames, all that had seemed to matter was thanking Eames for taking him under again—thanking him, every day, over and over, because it had mattered that much.

Arthur looked down at the PASIV where it lay on the bed. He had dreamed until dreams became too dangerous and still never found what he had sought: the dreamer as committed to excellence, as in love with the dream, as himself. He had known, in Mal, a dreamer as reckless as she was passionate; but the deeper she went, the further she went into the dreamscape and herself, the more lost she seemed. When she announced that she and Cobb were quitting the business, it only made sense—they were doing it for their kids, for the sake of their futures; and Arthur, knowing he couldn’t have dreamed alone, not wanting to dream without them, had followed where they went. Of course he had. 

And yet—perhaps, Arthur thought, if he’d only known Eames at the time. Whoever and whatever Eames was, here was someone who could have challenged him—someone who had known what he needed and been able to deliver it. He thought about Marie’s words to him: the ama-no-jaku granted wishes that you didn’t necessarily want to come true. 

But Eames had granted him a wish, he had said, not because he wanted to trick Arthur, but because he’d wanted to give Arthur something he’d lacked.

Did Eames need to inhabit dreams in his own skin? Arthur wondered. Could he slip in and out of dream skins the same way he moved in and out of other people’s skins in reality? Did he even need the PASIV to move in and out of dreams? What kind of dreamer was he, really? 

_ I wanted to grant you a wish.  _ Had Eames been a little more real, Arthur thought. Had he found Arthur earlier, long before the game of dreamshare had weeded out all other players whose love for dreaming had not yet been superseded by other concerns more practical and less passionate. 

Had he been able to stay.

Arthur sighed and closed the PASIV, suddenly totally at a loss. He felt that coming here had been ill-considered. Such a place would not bring him closer to Eames or to Rizuka. The reality of the place was of course drabber and realer than the dream version that the old businessman had conjured years ago, and still further removed from the idealized memory Arthur’s brain had carried for years of an already-idealized memory. He had no one to dream with; and, he realized with a mild shock of resignation, he had nothing in particular that he wanted to dream about.

It was still too early to catch the train back to Tokyo, so Arthur took his belongings once more, left the hotel, and walked around Kamakura. He walked along the beachfront with its towering vista of Mt. Fuji throwing its shadow over the bay. He would have liked to have taken Eames mountain climbing. 

Perhaps his dream had been real after all; perhaps he had caused Eames, the real Eames, to melt away forever, spirit and flesh and glowing amber eyes. Perhaps he should never have sent him away.

He wandered along the ancient houses and storefronts past the waterfront. He passed the tourist shops wearing their own histories like gaudy costume jewelry, the modern businesses sandwiched uncomfortably between the old ones as if they didn’t know what to do with their own newness. He thought of Eames trying to walk in heels, of Eames sketching strange and haunting images into his moleskines, of Eames drinking nothing but sugary caffeinated drinks that would have horrified Rizuka. He thought of Eames reaching for him every night and looking at him with eyes that were always too sharp and too eternal to belong to someone human—too full of wisdom and weariness and unadulterated need to belong to anyone fully of this world. Wherever Eames was now, Arthur thought, he needed Arthur still, human or not.

He closed his eyes and tried not to hear the Eames of his dream telling him to stop looking.

Arthur wasn’t sure he knew how.

The way back to the train station took him along the road to the Daibutsu. He remembered it from the businessman’s dream years ago; in the way that dreams had of collapsing time and space, the great Buddha with its stern expression and its giant face had loomed over every corner of the dream-city. This time around Arthur took the Enoden up to the shrine. 

He found himself drawn to a small café near the shrine, an unobtrusive building with gold-gilded paint on the windows and trim, as if it were attempting to camouflage itself in the shadow of the nearby idol.

The restaurant was empty except for an old man sipping sake near the kitchen and a couple of cooks taking their lunch break. He sat down by a window and watched the tourists and religious pilgrims wander in and out of the shrine. He could see the top of the giant Buddha’s gold pate just visible above the trees. Arthur wondered if the sculptor had set out to make an image that would withstand anything—storms, tornadoes, tsunamis and earthquakes. He remembered reading somewhere that the image had previously been housed indoors, except that the elements kept destroying the structures meant to shelter it, keep it intact. So now, finally, the eternal idol sat eternally outside, carved in stone and untouchable. 

When Arthur was a boy, he had thought that seeming to be made of stone was a particular form of strength. Thinking of it now, he only felt a mild sorrow. He kept thinking of Rizuka’s ability to make herself into a graven image of what a woman should be, the pristine appearance of perfection couched behind flawless makeup and consummate poise, the right balance of engaging laughter, girlish silliness, and the mature, smooth-voiced confidence of a real woman. Had the game left her feeling hollowed-out, needing to disappear? Eager to leave her perfect skin behind?

A large woman with old eyes served him tea. She looked at him strangely, as if he were the oddest thing she had seen in a resort full of oddities. Arthur wasn’t quite sure what he must look like to other people. He couldn’t really remember the last time he had looked in a mirror, and wasn’t sure that he wanted to start today, the first day after giving up his search.

He sipped his tea, letting the relaxing warmth of it slide down his palate and over his throat. It had been a long time since he had spoken to anyone. Just now he had only pointed at the menu to indicate what he wanted to drink. He supposed the last person to have heard him, back when his voice was still a part of things, must have been the Eames in his sleep.

Time slipped in and out of his notice as he drank the tea. He tried not to think of Rizuka, of Eames, but the silence of the restaurant reminded him of a deeper silence all around him. He had grown used to keeping still in the middle of it, lest it press in on him too painfully when he moved.

The woman returned with a plate of unacha. She set it in front of him without a word.

Arthur accepted the dish in confusion, for he had not ordered anything besides tea. He looked up at the woman who had brought it to him. She was short, with a round, blank face, a face curiously devoid of natural expression, free of worry lines or signs of aging. Her eyes, however, were strong and alert. 

“It is your favorite,” she said.

Her voice was flat. She sounded disinterested, but she sat down across from him anyway. She was wearing a jade sweater, a v-neck over a blouse and grey trousers – neat but nondescript, like everything else about her. She seemed formless to Arthur. Even her smile, light to begin with, seemed to vanish into the blank map of her face, with its lack of features – its expressionless silence.

“It is,” he said, taking a slow bite. It had been some time since he had tasted anything as good. “How did you know that?”

She watched him take a second bite; she watched him chew, and swallow, and reach for his cup of tea. She watched the lines of his throat as he drank from it. Then she looked out the window.

“Not far from here,” she said, not taking her eyes from the tourists crowding the pathway up to the shrine, “there is a hospital. A child was born there once.”

She cast him a glance, then got up to pour a cup of tea for herself. When she returned her expression seemed to reward him for waiting for the rest of her story.

“She lived not far away,” she continued, sipping her tea. “In a house with a large yard and many trees. She grew tall there, near the woods towards Fujisawa. Her family loved her. She had a brother, and a mother and father.”

She glanced up at him as if to make sure he was still paying attention. He had not taken his eyes from her face.

“When the child was four years old, she went into the woods. Some people think she was kidnapped by a Tengu and forced to wander there for many years.” She laughed, a faint, unmelodic laugh. “She might be wandering there still.”

Arthur wanted to ask what she meant, but felt he should say nothing.

“In reality, she wandered too far into the woods and came within range of a hunter’s rifle. The bullet struck her brain, but she did not die.” She took a sip of tea. “She was still breathing when they brought her back to the hospital and placed her on a white bed there. She slept for many years without waking. Her family visited her. They held hands and sang prayers. They came every week to the Daibutsu. They brought flowers to the shrine, flowers to the hospital room where she lay sleeping.”

Her voice dropped she spoke, lulling Arthur with its slow, dry cadences, its strange, expressionless rhythm which was no rhythm at all.

“She must have dreamed. She may have wandered the forests with the Tengu, leering at her with its red face, holding her hand in its talon. She may have been surrounded by disorder, reaching out to take the Mikaboshi, the eternal abyss, in her hands—to feel it clasp her in its embrace, pull her into the darkness of itself. All I really know is that, for many years, she slept. And surely she dreamed.” 

She turned to look at Arthur. The afternoon sun had slipped behind the pines and pagodas for a moment. It shadowed the café, graying her eyes and her lips, the curves of the backs of her hands.

“And then,” she said, “one day, she woke up.”

Abruptly she pushed her chair back and stood up, leaving Arthur staring at her empty chair across from him. He watched, shaking off her words like sleep, as she retrieved the pot of tea. She refilled his cup and her own before sitting back down.

“Do you know when that was?” she continued. The new warmth of the hot tea stung Arthur’s fingers. He ignored it and shook his head.

The woman named the date, her face as listless as ever. Arthur straightened. He set down the cup in his hands and looked at her with wide eyes. She took a drink from her own steaming cup.

“The next day,” she said, circling her hands around the mug, letting it warm her fingers. “The day after I woke up, the doctors allowed me to read the newspapers.”

Her eyes fastened onto his, suddenly wide, alert and inquisitive. “It was my first contact with the world, the world outside my white bed and my white room,” she said. “And there you were, on all the front pages—you and your fabulous wedding.”

She sat down her own cup of tea, and reached across the table. She placed one of her hands over his wrist, her fingers soft like mist against his skin.

“I’d convinced myself it was a dream,” she said. “I had dreamed I lived in a fantasy from which there was no escape.” Her fingers slid over his hand and turned it up. They found the smooth corners and rested there.

“But then,” she said, “I saw your face.” 

Her thumb traced the lines of his palm. “I remembered the scent of your aftershave. I remembered the curve of your throat and the crease of your shoulder blades. The way you take your tea and the way you used to frown at me when I laughed too loudly. The way you would stroke my hair while you thought I slept.” She looked up, and for a moment Arthur thought he could see familiar traces, fleeting and wry and too old for her years, for the unlived-in chambers of her face.

“I pretended I had been asleep,” she said. “I pretend I have just woken up. That the world is new, brand new. You remember,” she said. “The way it was before. The way we’d pretended we loved each other.” 

She laced her hand in his and pressed it gently; Arthur responded, though he did not actually feel the touch through the fog in his mind. He stared at her, intent on recapturing her face. She continued to fix him with that curiously blank expression, neither smiling nor listless. 

“I know most of what you will tell me, Arthur-kun,” she said. He shivered involuntarily at the sound of that honorific, turning his name into something he still did not know how to receive. It was a sound he had not heard since Eames came. He looked back at her, and waited.

“I saw the stories,” she said. “I read every article the magazines printed. I saw every photo they took of you. It was a beautiful wedding I planned, wasn’t it?” She laughed. “I just have one question.” She traced slow circles over his palm with her thumb.

“Exactly who, Arthur, did you marry?”  
  
  
  
  


 

When the time has come, when she has fit the trickster inside of her skin, when she can feel him moving around, his muscles unfolding between the sinews over her bones and the flesh that adorns her, the melon princess asks him the question she is burning with.

Did you come for me because I was not born of mortal flesh? She asks. Did you come for me because I will be married to a prince?

He laughs, and she feels the rumble of it inside her, throughout her, the her that is less and less her own, the her she can feel even now melting into his essence, merging with his trickster veins and his demon sex and his low thrumming voice.

Oh, princess, he laughs and laughs. I came for you because I knew you would open the door.




  
  
  
  


He found a pristine beauty in the uninhabited space of her face, opening its secrets to him the longer he looked. He told her about the wedding. He told her about the stranger inhabiting her body, about the ceremony, about the instant knowledge that something had been different. He did not tell her about the wedding night, about the extended honeymoon, or about the speech Eames had given in her place. He did not need to. She had read the tabloids too.

She took him for a drive. They wound upwards, away from the beaches, away from the shrines, into the woods that stretched away towards the distant foothills of the mountain. At length they turned off the main road onto a ridge that opened out onto a wide valley. She slowed her car, laughing. “They didn’t question many things, like how someone in my condition could learn to drive so quickly. Denial can be a useful thing.” She pulled over to the side of the road and stepped out. The hill dropped away beneath them and stretched out into farmland in the valley floor. Clusters of houses backed up against the woods. Arthur saw scattered fruit trees dropping their fruit around their boughs, and willow trees hugging the banks of streams that ran beside the road. The sun in its descent slanted streams of light through the clouds.

“This,” she said, “is where she grew up.” She stretched her hand out, then pointed to one house in particular, a small house enclosed in a wide sloping yard. The stream ran through it. “There,” she said. “This is where she would have grown up.”

Arthur looked. For the first time since she had begun to speak, he said her name. “Rizuka. It’s beautiful.” 

She looked at him, and for the first time since she had begun to speak, she smiled. “Her family loves her very much,” she said. “Their only expectation of her is that she live, Arthur. That she live and be happy.” She sat down on the hillside, right down in the grass, without concern for the dirt or the stains on her clothes. He joined her, and they sat together. 

“At night, I dream her,” she said. “I dream—I think she is still there, in my dreams. I believe she still runs through the forest. Sometimes in my dream I see a gazelle or a flock of birds, deep inside the forests, and I know.”

She reached down and took his hand. He closed his fingers around hers. It felt like holding someone else’s hand, and the contrast between the memory and the current moment made him think suddenly, sharply, of Eames.

He closed his eyes briefly and pictured himself holding Eames’ hand, here, in reality, as themselves.

“I have something for you,” he said. “Something you should have.”

Her skin was still folded neatly inside the fabric of her favorite dress, saffron silk lined with calico. He had wrapped it up so carefully, had been so gentle about placing it inside of his bag before he left Tokyo. 

It occurred to him that perhaps the ritual had not failed him after all. He took the skin and offered it to her, holding it flat upon his spread hands.

“This is what you need,” he said. “To come back.”

She looked at her skin, and went pale and still. Carefully, she ran a hand over the smooth flesh. “It’s so soft,” she said a bit wonderingly. “I took such good care of it, didn’t I?”

“It was beautiful,” said Arthur.

“The skin I wear now,” she said, “is not this well-cared for. It feels heavier. Some moments I don’t know how to move inside of it.” She ran her hand over the skin, tracing the curves of what had once housed her eyes, her hollow cheekbones. “And yet,” she continued after a moment, “it feels like a home, in a way this skin never did.” She took her hand away from her old skin and ran a hand over her new one. “It suits me. I find there are fewer expectations of me in this body. It’s... freeing.”

Arthur looked at her, trying to make himself voice the question hovering on his lips. She looked at him and studied him for a moment. “You traveled this far to find me,” she said. “Sasuga Arthur.”

Arthur found himself wanting to protest, though he wasn’t sure about what. “Your friends and family miss you very much,” he said at last.

She smiled again and looked back towards the houses below. “They will be happier with their memories of me, I think, than with the reality.” She took his hand again. “But this wasn’t the only reason that you came, was it.” 

Arthur looked down. “I think,” he said, “you can help me find him.”

She hummed. “Him,” she echoed. There was that in her voice, a faint echo of the woman she had been before. “My, my,” she said. “How we’ve both changed.”

“If,” Arthur said a bit desperately, “If you take the skin back—“

“Oh, no, Arthur-kun,” she said—and all at once she laughed, brilliantly, her face lighting up with it, as with the flash of sunlight or the glow of a wonderful discovery. She laughed like the Rizuka he knew and remembered, the Rizuka he had loved. “Not me.” She stood up and took the skin from him as she did so. It unfolded and fell to its full length, a little shorter than she was now. She held it out, the arms against her arms, thighs against her thighs, belly against her belly. “See what a terrible fit it would make me now?”

She stretched out her hand to him. “Stand up,” she said, offering him a hand up. Arthur took it, and his hand closed around hers with the skin still outstretched between them. She moved towards him with the skin still fully unfolded, joining his other hand with hers so that they stood facing one another with only the skin between them.

“Think about it, Arthur,” she said. “You came all this way. You spent all this time taking care of me—of this.”

“I needed to get you back,” Arthur protested.

“No,” she said, shaking her head gently. “Don’t you see? I’m not the one who’s in love with this skin.”

She placed the lifeless fingers in his and stepped back.

He stared at the flesh he held in his hands before looking back at her. “You think that I—” he began, but she waved his words away and kissed him on the cheek instead.

“You’ve been trying to call each of us back to this skin,” she said. “But perhaps that’s not what this skin is for.” 

Arthur struggled for words, and finally came up with, “I think... I understand. Thank you.”

She rolled her eyes at him, and Arthur realized that he was smiling. Slowly he undressed, leaving his clothes carefully folded, lying there on the hill next to his bag and the PASIV device. The sun struck his bare skin and sent the hairs prickling along his arms, and as he took stock of the nerve endings in his arms and legs, he had a sudden moment of panic:  _ what if it didn’t fit. _

“Arthur,” Rizuka said. “Don’t be afraid.”

And somehow, just like that, Arthur wasn’t.

It opened in the back, just as it had done when Eames stepped out of it. It closed around him when he fitted himself inside of it, a warm, welcoming cocoon of space. The world moved, and Arthur’s body shifted; the muscles filled new spaces, new hollows and curves and absences—she looked down at hands that were delicate, slender and strong, out of eyes that could see two worlds at once.

She ran her hands along her body, feeling how smooth, how elegant and thin she was, her muscles stretched out over her frame; how sensitive she was to touch, how delicate and light the tones of her flesh. She already knew that she could remove it, but it didn’t matter: she couldn’t imagine herself ever wanting out of this—out of her beautiful, precious skin.

When she looked up, Eames was there, right beside her, exactly as she had left him—as she always had felt he would be.

“Took you long enough to get here,” he said, looking pleased despite himself.

“I missed you,” said Arthur. 

Eames smiled at her, his golden eyes no longer hidden behind the deep brown ones that Arthur now wore. “You look beautiful, darling.”

She reached for his hands. They were even broader now that she was smaller, and the sensation of holding them in her new hands felt to Arthur like the heated rush of falling in love.

“You’re still taller than me, though,” Eames added with a huff.

“We’ll get around that,” Arthur grinned, pulling him into her arms. 

He looked at her. “You know I would have waited for you even if you’d taken longer,” he said. His voice was quiet. Arthur ran her hand over his cheek and pressed her forehead to his lips. “Rizuka,” Eames added. “She figured it out quickly.”

Arthur looked around, but she could no longer see Rizuka amid the landscape of possibilities unfolding everywhere she looked. She could see the universe stretched out around them, tri-fold and multi-colored, particles separating and dividing wherever she looked. 

“She was always smarter than me,” Arthur said.

“Well,” Eames said, smirking. “I have to say, you’re pretty smart for a girl.”

Arthur leaned into him, placing her warm fingers against the back of his neck, running them through his sleek brown hair and trailing them down over his beautiful ink-drenched skin. Eames hummed in pleasure, almost a purr, and ran his hands down her shoulders, over her breasts, across her smooth curved stomach. Arthur shuddered and pressed in closer. She went willingly when Eames pressed her down flat against the hillside and lay above her. She relaxed against it, the blades of grass cool and prickling all along her back.

“We both still have a lot to learn about girls,” she told him, pulling him down against her, wanting to feel his skin against hers.

“Darling,” he responded, smiling. He ran his fingers through her hair. “We’ve got time to learn.”

And they did, Arthur thought, pulling Eames into her. The centuries in Eames’s eyes were closer than ever. She was not afraid. She could see the Mikaboshi, the eternal abyss, around them, but it was full of light, not darkness as Rizuka had said—bright golden and waiting for them, forever.

Arthur lay back against the cool grass and kept her eyes open. There were things to be said, and lives to untangle, but for now, she wanted to kiss him, to feel his lips against her lips, his soft mouth against hers. His body was thick and hard and satisfying against hers, her own light and pliable, almost like the way it had been between them before, between him and her, the memories blurring together until it no longer mattered which memory and which body belonged to who.

And while she was thinking about kissing him, Eames kissed her, deep and firm, words he would never say, never need to say, offered straight from his mouth to hers, melting on her tongue. 

Arthur wrapped herself up in the folds of Eames, and knew that later, when they stepped off the hillside together, they would fly.

**Author's Note:**

> [The melon princess and the ama-no-jaku. ](http://intracoastal-wanderings.com/mukashi/urikohime.html)


End file.
